She had thought it time for him to return indoors, but he pleaded for a visit to his beloved roses. He prided himself on being always able to pick roses on Christmas Day. God. The tireless Spirit of eternal creation, the Spirit of Love. What else was it that out of formlessness had shaped the spheres, had planned the orbits of the suns. The law of gravity we named it. What was it but another name for Love, the yearning of like for like, the calling to one another of the stars. What else but Love had made the worlds, had gathered together the waters, had fashioned the dry land. The cohesion of elements, so we explained it. The clinging of like to like. The brotherhood of the atoms.!

At Girton it was more by force of will, of brain, that she had to make her position. There was more competition. Joan welcomed it, as giving more zest to life. But even there her beauty was by no means a negligible quantity. Clever, brilliant young women, accustomed to sweep aside all opposition with a blaze of rhetoric, found themselves to their irritation sitting in front of her silent, not so much listening to her as looking at her. It puzzled them for a time. Because a girl’s features are classical and her colouring attractive, surely that has nothing to do with the value of her political views? Until one of them discovered by chance that it has. A fear was creeping over her. “Why have you come back?” she asked.

“I had to see our solicitor one morning,” he explained, “when I was secretary to a miners’ union up north. A point had arisen concerning the legality of certain payments. It was a matter of vast importance to us; but he didn’t seem to be taking any interest, and suddenly he jumped up. ‘I’m sorry, Phillips,’ he said, ‘but I’ve got a big trouble of my own on at home—I guess you know what—and I don’t seem to care a damn about yours. You’d better see Delauny, if you’re in a hurry.’ And I did.” “Shall I shut the door?” suggested Joan. Mrs. Phillips’s thin hands were playing nervously with the bed clothes. There still seemed something that she had to say. As if Joan hadn’t thought of everything. Her eyes were fixed upon the narrow strip of light between the window curtains.